I found this thought-provoking. I’d be curious to hear more about your recommendations for readers. I’m wondering:
Would you recommend ~all readers try decreasing their sleep to ~6 hours a night and observe the effects? Or should they slowly decrease until the effects are negative?
If not, how should they decide whether it makes sense for them?
What percentage of readers do you estimate would be overall more productive with ~6 hours of sleep than their unrestricted amount?
How much individual variability do you think there is here?
Some background is that I read Why We Sleep a while ago and loved it, I think because it told a story I liked. My personal experience was that I generally dealt with little sleep badly[1], and reading that others around me who seemingly functioned better with little sleep actually didn’t and were fooling themselves was a nice story selfishly.
Then I read your takedown, which was not as comforting to read but seemed right to me. What I took from your takedown is that most of the claims in Why We Sleep were unsubstantiated, so I should go back to something like the prior of my observed experiences: I and some others can’t deal with little sleep very well, while those I’m a bit jealous of are much better at sleeping little while being productive and happy.
Reading this piece now, I’m convinced to a decent extent that this restriction will work for some subset of people. But how large is this subset? How much individual variability do you think there is here? Is it worth it for people with prior negative experiences with lack of sleep like me and Peter and Oli in other comments to do more rigorous experimentation? What exactly should that experimentation be?
While I haven’t done any controlled self-experiments or anything, I generally have less ability to focus and stronger urges to rest and nap even after one night of ⇐ ~6 hours of sleep, and they get stronger after more.
I found this thought-provoking. I’d be curious to hear more about your recommendations for readers. I’m wondering:
Would you recommend ~all readers try decreasing their sleep to ~6 hours a night and observe the effects? Or should they slowly decrease until the effects are negative?
If not, how should they decide whether it makes sense for them?
What percentage of readers do you estimate would be overall more productive with ~6 hours of sleep than their unrestricted amount?
How much individual variability do you think there is here?
Some background is that I read Why We Sleep a while ago and loved it, I think because it told a story I liked. My personal experience was that I generally dealt with little sleep badly[1], and reading that others around me who seemingly functioned better with little sleep actually didn’t and were fooling themselves was a nice story selfishly.
Then I read your takedown, which was not as comforting to read but seemed right to me. What I took from your takedown is that most of the claims in Why We Sleep were unsubstantiated, so I should go back to something like the prior of my observed experiences: I and some others can’t deal with little sleep very well, while those I’m a bit jealous of are much better at sleeping little while being productive and happy.
Reading this piece now, I’m convinced to a decent extent that this restriction will work for some subset of people. But how large is this subset? How much individual variability do you think there is here? Is it worth it for people with prior negative experiences with lack of sleep like me and Peter and Oli in other comments to do more rigorous experimentation? What exactly should that experimentation be?
While I haven’t done any controlled self-experiments or anything, I generally have less ability to focus and stronger urges to rest and nap even after one night of ⇐ ~6 hours of sleep, and they get stronger after more.